Literacy
This week our focus story was ‘How to Catch a Star‘ by Oliver Jeffers. (This is a YouTube link. Top tip for watching YouTube with your child: go to the settings cog along the play bar and turn off autoplay – this avoids an inappropriate clip coming up automatically, and helps to discourage your child from passively watching clip after clip). We read the book and spent time retelling the story in our own words.
Phonics
During our recent Phonics lessons we’ve been expanding our digraph knowledge. Digraphs are two letters that make one sound. Here are the ones we now know so far:
ck, ss, ll, ff, zz, qu, ch, sh, th, ng, nk
Help at home: you could write these digraphs on paper to play with your child. They’d be great as flashcards to practise or if you made two sets, you could play games such as Snap or Matching Pairs. You also hide one pack around the house and then use the other as a prompt to find the right one.
The Phonics challenge in class this week was to challenge a friend to a Tricky Word Boo game. You need to read as many words as you can and collect them in a bowl as you go. Be careful though! If you come across the word ‘Boo’ – you need to put all your words back. The winner is the person with the most cards at the end.
Help at home: You could play a game of Tricky Word Boo at home.
Word Of The Week
Our word of the week this week is ‘reflection‘.
We use this song to help us practise the word of the week in class:
Poetry Picnic
Each week we learn a new poem and we recite this poem every day. By saying the poem out loud, we can focus on the sounds and rhythm of each word or line. We talk to children about how this can help us become better readers. This week’s poem is called ‘Mice’ by Rose Fyleman.
Here’s Sunshine Class reciting it 🙂
Maths
After watching an episode of Numberblocks, we enjoyed making our own Stampoline prints to show different ways of making 5.
Help at home: You could watch the Stampolines episode with your child
PE
During our PE lessons, we’ve been using the large equipment in the hall to practise our balancing skills. Balancing is one of the fundamental movement skills. It is a key skill for many sports such as tennis, gymnastics, football, ballet, dance, golf and many more.
Winter weather
The winter weather is well and truly here. We had fun in our outdoor classroom mark making in the frost with paint brushes and water and being ice detectives.
